(an adaptation of) “The Ivy Green” by Charles Dickens (1836):
Oh, a hardy plant is the Ivy green,
That creeps over Canal Street walls!
It’s not too picky about its meals, I glean,
On this street so dark and pall.
The wall is crumbled, the stones are decayed,
The plants around it look dead:
There’s nothing here but lots of shade,
A sunflower couldn’t turn its head.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
•
Quickly it grows, ivy covers all things,
Walls, homes, whatever it may be.
Look how high it climbs, how tightly it clings,
To its friend the Sugar Maple Tree!
As it grows across the wall and to the ground,
Across the street it waves,
It peeks above the stones and mounds
To look over at the graves.
Creeping where no one has seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
•
Classes have graduated, their theses decayed,
Harvard-Yales have come and passed;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
It’s much prettier than this grass.
This brave green plant, in its lonely days,
Will likely outlive us all:
However big Murray Tower is,
The ivy will grow as tall.
Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
•
Original poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45863/the-ivy-green
